In a world consumed by battle and death the only chance is Vivien, a higher being created by the God of Fire to locate a weapon that can destroy the God of Darkness. Gods: Lands of Infinity Special Edition invites players to take up Vivien's task as they adventure through the world of Antasion completing quests, interacting with non-player characters, trading goods, acquiring new skills, and entering third-person, turn based battles. Any item a player finds or loots from a body can be sold or traded with in-game avatars.

Gods is an RPG game that puts you in the role of Vivien, a hero sent to another world by a god whose world is embroiled in a nasty god war. Her job is to track down the local gods and ask them for an artifact that can take care of the evil god on her world and end the war. That's about what I can tell from the confusing opening cinematics, anyway. It's hard to keep track of things when the gods have easy to remember names like Arsvaargh. Unfortunately, Vivien arrives at the new world sans powers and must begin her quest to stop a god war as your typical newbie level one adventurer.

I have to note at this point that Vivien is not your typical female RPG adventurer as she is given the voice and likeness of 2000's Penthouse Pet of the Year, Kyla Cole. Before the drool starts pooling at the corner of your mouth (or you send an angry email to your girl gamer clan), I need to mention that Cole is probably the most-clothed RPG heroine you'll ever find. Rather than show her in a flimsy get-up with an armored bra, the game's menus have her wearing full plate armor. While in game, most of the time the only image you get to see of her is a static headshot that sits near the bottom of the screen. You'll get to see her full body during the game's battles, but the graphics are at least a half decade behind the times and even her starting outfit is downright modest. I'm not sure what they were paying her for, but it certainly wasn't for her voice-acting talent.

The game itself is played from a first-person view and the first thing that you'll notice is that you are about a foot high. Either that or the game uses a kneecap cam. It's just plain odd to go about your travels and feel like you're the height of a flower, and I'm not sure what the developers were thinking when they locked the camera in at such an odd position. Once you decide to ignore your odd view of the world, the next thing you'll notice is that the world is populated by doppelgangers. There are only a handful of character models and even fewer voice actors. Two minutes into the game I came across a contingent of about five guards and each and every one was voiced by the same actor, and he didn't even bother to change his voice between each character.

The game world is set-up as a collection of instances. To travel between them you must go to the travel point in your current level and then select your new location from the map. The instances are pretty much divided up between safe and hostile zones, and for some odd reason the town or other place of interest is always placed a long and boring hike away from the point at which you enter and exit the instance.

Quests are about as unimaginative as they come, and you'll be tasked with one "go there and kill that" or "go there and brink back that" quest after another. All of the tedious back and forth slogging is made more so by the game's insistence that you take the time to eat and drink during the day and by the fact that you'll have to play the role of a merchant if you want to afford even the most humble of armor and weapon upgrades. In Gods adventuring doesn't pay nearly as well as more mercantile pursuits. The game has a basic "has/wants" economy in place that will have you acting the mule to buy something low at one place and sell it high at another. I'm not sure why the developers thought it would be enjoyable to slog back and forth between merchants while listening to the same fruity background music endlessly repeating itself on a short loop, but that's what you'll spend way too much time doing.

When you enter a battle the play moves from first-person, real-time action to third-person, turn-based play. Play proceeds in rounds in which you select an action such as an attack or spell, watch the results, and then wait for each of your enemies to do an action in turn. The actions that you have available each turn will depend on the number of action points that you have remaining. Since the only way to regenerate these action points is to choose the do-nothing defend option, you're basically forced to skip every third turn or so. However, your enemies are not constrained by action points, and seem perfectly capable of doing whatever they want each and every turn. I'm not sure why the developers chose to constrain the battles with both single action turns and action points; usually in turn-based RPGs you have one or the other. Perhaps it was to extend the time it takes to resolve a battle or to introduce some additional challenge, but in practice it comes across as a mixed metaphor that doesn't quite work. Luckily the game isn't as battle heavy as a Japanese-style console RPG or the lackluster battles would quickly grow tedious.